448 days to go?

Yesterday I finally accepted that my peg leg is a real issue. For months now I thought it was a soft tissue injury that with enough rest and weight loss it would repair itself. Well it hasn't. In fact it has become a daily problem. I was enjoying my brief, easy-paced trail run on the pancake flat section of trail, doing a short out and back, when for no reason my peg leg decided to show up. I shortened my stride but it only took the edge of the pain away. I stopped to walk, which did help until even walking included the peg leg feeling. So what did I do? I googled it...again.
Okay, so based on my extensive google searching, which I am fully aware does not equal even a month of real medical training, I can assume I have a vertical medial radial tear. It's the only thing that seems to have symptoms close to what I have. Searching "my knee feels like it has a peg leg" did nothing aside from give me some fun pirate images to look at. Searching based on more specific pain symptoms did give me enough info to discard the idea that this is an MCL issue. Now, all I need is an actual image of the inside of my knee and "bam" I'm all set. Too bad I live in one of the worst places in the country to get an MRI.
Now if it does in fact turn out to be a vertical radial meniscus tear I'll be super pissed at my previous OA doctor. He was the one who first saw it on the MRI I had last year but brushed it off saying it was too small to be a problem. Well after reading various medical journals it appears that he should have actually done something about that little nick, that it would rub against the synovial fluid and cause more and more pain as it grew. Yeah, it likely grew because nothing was done and I was instructed to return to my normal activity level-which has been impossible by the way. My current OA doctor tells me to stick to the shorter distance of 5km, which is honestly the best I can do totally pain-free, but after my last few runs, even that is becoming something I have to battle through to finish. It would just be so nice to know definitively what is going on in there, because I'm more certain than ever its more than knee OA, which is a pain in on itself.
What to do? Well, there are a couple of so-called options a Nova Scotian can exercise when waiting for the MRI triage system to call my name. I can spend my time running to my GP, complaining about my knee and maybe she'll call and the diagnostic services place and they'll bump me up on the list-maybe. The other option is to spend time I don't have driving to another area of the province, some 2-3 hours away, to use a machine that also exists only 5km away from me but has a smaller line of patients waiting to use it. When you're a parent and use your vacation days for child sick days, every vacation day is carefully planned when they do happen. So to sacrifice one because our medical system isn't managed well enough that the people who live in this city can use the machines that exist here, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
My husband tells me to use my mother's money (that she has offered-twice) to get a private one done. I did this last year while I was on crutches and looking at the same wait time. To have her spend her hard-earned money on a test that my tax dollars already pay for also leaves a bad taste. So I suffer and wait. And wait. 448 days to go.